As expected the Turin thing set some readers off, pro and con. I’m pretty sure Derb and I have waxed dyspeptic on this front before. The basic point is simple. English pronounces certain place-names a certain way. We don’t say Firenze we say Florence (unless your Katie Couric on the Today Show this week). We don’t pronounce Paris, “Pah-ree” unless we want people to make fun of us or unless we are making fun of someone. When Burma changed its name, that was one thing. But as I understand it, we were simply told to call Peking “Bay-jing.”

Anyway, a reader adds this wrinkle:

Let me be the 32nd person to probably E-mail you that for some reason the American Heritage Dictionary lists two acceptable English pronunciations for Turin (Turin and Torino). Rome, however, has only one acceptable English pronunciation. Why? No idea. Of course this doesn’t mean you are wrong; it just complicates the case a touch. Personally, I wish Am. Heritage didn’t list Turino because I just as well have something else to gripe about.